Volunteers turn Wyoming Frontier Prison into haunted attraction for 37th year

Staff and 40 volunteers spend two weeks transforming the Rawlins landmark for its biggest annual fundraiser

RAWLINS — Forty volunteers and a small staff have transformed the Wyoming Frontier Prison into a haunted attraction for this year’s Halloween tours, which end this weekend and serve as the site’s biggest annual fundraiser.

Tours continue through Saturday, Oct. 31.

Reservations are $20 per person and must be made online at WyomingFrontierPrison. org, where the Halloween landing page appears on the home screen. Guests must be 12 or older, and each tour is limited to 30 people. In all, the prison is offering 33 tours over three nights. Each tour runs about 30 minutes, starting at 7 p.m.

This year’s theme is Revolution 250, a nod to the nation’s 250th anniversary.

“We couldn’t do it without our 40 volunteers,” said Tina Hill, the Wyoming Frontier Prison Historic Site Director.

Planning begins in the summer, when seasonal staff choose a theme. Volunteers then meet every Friday starting in late September to assign roles and map the route. Hill said the route changes every year. The goal is to surprise people who have taken the regular daytime tours.

“We want to try to trick them at night and change things around,” Hill said.

This year’s route includes the prison gymnasium, which is not part of the standard tour. Staff block off sections of the building because it is too large to decorate in full, and sometimes tarp a cell block so that “instead of having four tiers above your head, it’s closed in and low,” she said.

Decorating cannot begin until daytime tours end, because the barriers and false walls make historic tours impossible. This year, that meant starting Oct. 13, leaving about two weeks to set up. The work is shared among teens and adults, Hill said.

Volunteers are now about half high school students and half adults, and many of the adults began as teenagers.

Because of work and school schedules, Friday meetings start at 2:30 p.m., taking advantage of early release days.

The Halloween budget is only $2,000, so staff reuse props and rely on donations and homemade pieces. Hill said she tries to add at least one new prop each year. This year’s addition, an animatronic raccoon that pops out of a trash can, was bought with a $150 grant from the Community Resource Center. She said the grant was split with another applicant.

Hill, who has worked the prison’s Halloween event every year since 1991 except one, said the tours bring in between $10,000 and $14,000 despite funding cuts from local governments and a sluggish economy. Daytime tours still generate about 60% of the site’s revenue.

Hill said many guests now come from outside Carbon County. Discover Carbon County provides an advertising grant that funds electronic billboards in Evanston, Rock Springs, Green River and Casper. She said she hopes visitors will also stay in local hotels and eat at local restaurants.

“Our number one goal is for people to have fun,” said Hill. “I’m a tour guide, so I can hear all those people behind me and it just makes my heart happy when I can hear them giggling or when they’re joking with each other or they’re like, ‘Oh, I saw you jump’ and ‘No, I didn’t jump!’ And I want people to have fun.”

Costumed volunteers known as “spooks” handle most of the jump scares.

“It’s a feather in our cap if we can make you scream,” said Hill.

Jake Cruz, who has volunteered since about 2014, is one of the spooks. Cruz also helps with decorating.

He said the building’s age shapes how props are placed.

“A lot of the prison can be pretty fragile,” he said, so volunteers use no tape or adhesives and hang items with wire.

Cruz wears two masks, including a smiling demon mask from an Etsy artist and a gruesome one he made himself.

“My favorite part is the reactions of people,” he said. He said he can single out guests who are easy to rattle.

“I just live and breathe Halloween pretty much,” Cruz said. 

He said the end of the final midnight tour on Halloween is bittersweet. 

“I get the last scare in, and then it just kind of goes quiet, and then suddenly I get super sad…I look forward to it every year,” he said.

Reservations and tour times are available at WyomingFrontierPrison.org.

This story was published on Oct. 30, 2026.

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